To quickly explain bower to a Python developer I can say that it's "the Distutils of the JavaScript world".
I'm not a front-end developer because I think that "knowing how to do some JavaScript" doesn't mean being a front-end guy, however I like the direction where JavaScript is going. But note: take the rest of this article like it is: a "Bower for dummies" note!

In my last article I quickly introduced the jQuery Plugin site way of keeping update it's database: a simple JSON file. Bower is doing the same for populating its component registry site.
So an "official" jQuery plugin can be also a bower component.

Step by step

First of all you need to install the node package manager (npn), and for a MacOS user is really simple (same for Linux guys):

The bower.json file is really similar to the file needed by the jQuery plugin site, but it's not the same (a boring task: you must keep updated both files).
As we are focused on jQuery plugin, note that jQuery (that can be installed using bower) is defined in the "dependencies" section.